Cognitive Labs

That's a fine question.

We did a little digging and went back to the year 1999 - the year of the IPO with many deals grounded in three words: internet, potential, optimism and the year made famous by the artist once again known as prince.

That was also the year in which a small interactive agency created the first action-game advertisement, punch the monkey which was Flash, not Java - which had jillions of impressions in the remnant inventory category by 2001 and was used as a system default by companies like L90, DoubleClick, Avenue A, etc as they slid down to temporary obscurity (most were resurrected in the past 2-3 years, like a Phoenix, if they stuck to their knitting).

Here's one I grabbed from mikeonads.com which he grabbed from mySpace...

We’ve all seen this ad… it loudly proclaims “Punch the monkey to win a free _____”, fill in the blank with whatever is new and out today. A ps3, an xbox, maybe even an iphone (which hasn’t even been released yet). It’s perhaps one of the strangest phenomenons of online advertising, and I have yet to meet a person not in the industry who understands how these make money.

lets look at an example I just saw on myspace.com:

So, if I hit this monkey ten times, I’m going to get a FREE PS3!!!

We would contend that Advertising is in its infancy. Disliked though it may be, advertising drives spurts of online innovation and will morph into forms that are heretofore unimagined, including not only avatars and virtual worlds (which already exist in version 1.0 format) but more bold and even 'dangerous' visions involving neuroscience and cognition which will impact multiple senses - vision, touch, and smell and thought.

The sense of smell (olfactory sense) is one of the most powerful emotional influencers, and the nose is the most direct pathway to the brain, bypassing the blood brain barrier. For this reasons loss of smell is one of the signs of cognitive dysfunction leading to Alzheimer's, and is a typical symptom of individuals suffering from Alzheimer's. (see William Frey's work on olfactory delivery methods).

Smell-based advertising opens up a new vista for marketers, activating memories and fomenting action: hitting a key, thinking a thought, etc.

Imagine if thoughts themselves could be tagged? Marketers could then finally measure mindshare. Since thoughts are electrochemical impulses, the known universe of human thoughts constitute the available market. By distributing a peer-to-peer ad system that people could subscribe to, (e.g., influenced by Sharman Networks, but opt-in, once called altnet, also linked to Skype) the basic marketplace could be formed. In technical theory, a peer system (or hybrid ad servers + peers) would be more ideally suited than a centralized operation..

imagine this:

Advertisement:

"A penny for your thoughts?" Nonsense!
Join neuroadvantage and get paid $100 a month for your thoughts. In fact, the more you think, the more you can earn! (Thoughts replace page views/Think-throughs replace click-throughs)

The peer would faithfully record your individual thoughts for a time. Once the activities were downloaded from all of the subscribing peers, patterns in the data would be located. Now the tricky part...creating electrochemical impulses with affiliated topical tags, that can be shared across the network in real-time, and inserted via your local peer (either a device or something like a personal cognitive address, not unlike an IP address, for each brain). These tags would then be inserted into breaks between individuals thoughts, not unlike the DART system or the old EDI systems broadcasters use to tell affiliates what ads to run when. The disconcerting aspect is that subscribers wouldn't know if that sudden hankering for pizza hut were real or a 'tag.'

This is quite similar to what happens today except the data gathering device is done at the root directory, the brain, rather than a remote subdirectory - the eyeball. Keep taking the concept further and you end up inside the Matrix.

Let's put together a biz plan...

Labels: ads, frey, neuroadvantage, neuromarketing, nose, sri

tongue in cheek: Tang gets a new delivery method-Flickr

At SRI International's Center for Research on Independent Aging Dr. William Frey of the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota ADRC (Alzheimer's Disease Research Center) presented novel research into intra-nasal drug delivery yesterday- Cognitive Labs was there. Dr. Frey's discoveries center on the recognition that the olfactory nerves form a direct pathway into the brain, bypassing the blood brain barrier. Dr. Frey started the first ADRC in the nation-which was the first to receive funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1977.

The blood brain barrier is a permeable molecular sieve that permits beneficial compounds to enter the brain from the bloodstream, while preventing larger diameter compounds from entering-including some pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals.

You may think of a cocaine or meth addict snorting away. In so doing they bypass the blood brain barrier and reach the brain directly. For this same reason the sense of smell is closely aligned with memory and cognition - as odor 'signals' traverse the nerve pathways to the brain. Memory Loss is often accompanied by a loss of sense of smell. Anything that affects the brain can enter through the nasal cavity (including the recent cases of warm-water deaths in the U.S. due to a hostile amoeba that uses this same pathway). Odd and distinctive odors may be linked to changes in cognitive state, such as the smell of sulphur and ozone.

Intra-nasal delivery may be the wave of the future in cognitive enhancement. Rather than drinking your sports drink, or on a more serious note...your neuro-enhancer - you may snort it.

Labels: adrc, cokaine, frey, meth, snorting

Only a few years ago, scientists believed that substances inhaled into the nostrils quickly entered the bloodstream and impacted the individual. However, it turns out that
this is not the case.

Instead, it turns out that the nasal passage is the qickest route to the brain and penetration of the the blood brain barrier, according to scientists.

Interested? Stay tuned for the full story as revealed at SRI International on October 3.

Labels: blood, bloodbrainbarrier, brain, frey, sri, sri international